Wonderland
by XSilverLiningsX
Summary: [Borderline crack] "I'm going to take the safe route and blame Evie for all of this..." Lann grumbled to himself as he leapt into the human-sized hole in the ground that the frantically chirping baby gremlin had disappeared into moments earlier.


Vindictus (c) Nexon/devCAT

Alice In Wonderland (c) Lewis Carroll

* * *

"Ugh, my head... I'm definitely never going to do that again..." With a hand pressed against his throbbing temple, Lann sat up from the pile of linen that had mercifully cushioned him from being smacked face-first against the checkered-tiled floor. The time it took for him to fall from the surface to... wherever he was had felt like several hours, but at the very least he was thankful that he was, indeed, back on dry land.

Pushing himself onto his feet, Lann patted down his gear for any hints of cracks and dents from the fall. His helmet was gone and nowhere in sight, but his armor was for the most part undamaged. His swords had managed to stay where they usually were, hanging on his belt. So far so good, he mused.

Surveying his curious surroundings with critical eyes, Lann noticed that there he had landed in the middle of a long corridor reminiscent of the ones in Ortel Castle with several doors evenly spaced apart on the sides. He tried the closest one to his left and found it locked; similarly, he had no luck with the one next to it, nor the one of the opposite side.

Lann ran a hand over his face and slouched against a door, puzzled. The hallway seemed to go on forever on both ends, and supposedly all the doors were locked. How was he supposed to get out?

"It's so very late! Oh dear, oh dear, _oh dear_!" Lann's head turned in the direction of where the squeaky voice was coming from, his hands napping to the handles of his swords. The pile of linen rustled ominously for a few seconds, before a fuzzy gremlin – the same gremlin that he had followed down the hole in the ground – kicked itself free from a tangle of dirty sheets.

Lann blinked. Huh. Talking gremlins. You don't exactly see that every day.

The gremlin tittered nervously as it quickly hopped past Lann without so much as a glance in his direction. The creature stopped at the door that was next to the one Lann was leaning against and, somehow, the door swung open with a noisy creak.

Lann managed to stick an arm in the door before it closed and forced his way into the room. Lann glared at the semi-sentient door for a moment, but another bird-like twitter caught his attention. The gremlin trembled in the center of the cluttered room (_it looked alarmingly similar to Brynn's laboratory_) and brought out a pocket watch.

"Oh, this is very not good! I'm terribly late, oh so very late!" The gremlin darted over to a corner and ended up colliding with the wall in its haste. Jumping back to its feet and tittering in its distress, Lann watched, eyebrow raised, as a small door magically appeared in the wall. It swung open and the gremlin squeezed through it.

The tiny gremlin-sized door remained open, however, and Lann sighed when he noticed that there were no other obvious (_human-sized_) exits that he could go through. Walking over to the tables laden with bottles and laboratory equipment, he thought he might as well start looking for something that he could use.

After a while of throwing papers over his shoulder and shoving objects out of his way, Lann came across a potion labeled 'DRINK ME' in an unfamiliar scrawl. The potion was a lurid green color and looked exactly like one of the stamina potions that Brynn sold. Lann picked it up; strangely, the potion weighed almost nothing in his hand and smelled faintly of iced strawberry brandy.

After a second of deliberation (_could be poison, might not be poison, should I...?_), Lann gulped the concoction down. Oddly enough, the potion tasted like Tieve's pancakes with a hint of the kind of spiced rum that was only available in Malina. Kind of bittersweet with a lingering aftertaste. Tangy?

The next thing Lann was aware of was that he had shrunk down by a few feet. Thankfully, though, his gear shrank with him, so he ran out of the way of the suddenly giant empty potion bottle that rolled off to the side.

Well, at a closer look, it seems like he could definitely fit through the gremlin door. Shrugging his shoulders, Lann sprinted through the exit. Perhaps the gremlin hadn't gotten very far away...

… and he was in the hall with the innumerable doors yet again. Except the doors now looked ginormous because of how tiny he was at the moment. Damn.

There! There! The gremlin was a few yards away and chirping at its pocket watch. Lann ran up, hoping to catch the creature, but the gremlin startled at the sound of his footsteps and darted away, through another gremlin-sized door between two other man-sized doors. Lann quickly followed, the marble floors giving way to a worn dirt path weaving through grass.

A garden? A field? Nonetheless, everything seemed much bigger than he was. The grass and dandelions towered over him like miniature buildings, pebbles looked like stones the size of frogs, and flowers of all colors and shapes twisted into elaborate contortions that all but looked incomprehensible to Lann.

Lann climbed up a giant tree root, hoping that a higher position would allow him to see over the impossibly tall grass and plants. In the distance, no more than a short walk, he could see a small pond with a small blob of something floating in the center. For sure it was moving, paddling about, so Lann elected to go and see who or what it was.

And, hopefully, end up getting directions.

"Hey there! Excuse m–...?" Lann cut off mid sentence as he looked, really _looked_, at the figure floating in the middle of the pond: a polar bear twice the size as himself floated on his back serenely past a gaping Lann.

Words failed Lann as he watched the bear crack open an eyelid, open its great maw for a yawn, and look at him disinterestedly for a moment before turning his lumbering self around and paddling down the pond. The white tyrant disappeared around a corner of a wall of dirt and grass, and Lann pinched himself in the side. Several times.

_What._

_Was._

_Going._

_On._

_?_

The pattering of footsteps drew Lann from the whirlwind of thoughts in his head and he turned to see a baby gremlin, the same one from earlier, hopping by with a worried expression on its fox-like face.

The gremlin was chittering as it pawed at its button-like nose with a flipper. "Deary me, deary me, it seems I've dropped my gloves! Deary, deary me, this is not good, deary me... you there!"

Lann looked over his shoulder, but saw no sign of anyone else there. The gremlin made an impatient noise. "Yes, you! What in the name of Morrighan are you doing out here? Run home and fetch me my gloves this very moment!"

Lann let out a strained laugh at being commanded to _fetch _by a talking, pastel yellow, infant of a gremlin that was shorter than him by four feet. _The tiny creature didn't even have fingers, why did it need gloves of all things?_ "Now, see here–"

The baby gremlin chomped on his arm with its tiny beak and snarled, hellfire burning in its beady little eyes. "FETCH ME MY GLOVES!"

Lann pried the enraged mammal-bird-creature-_thing_ off his limb and backed away, a hand on the hilt of one of his swords. Perhaps he could...

"MY GLOVES!" Lann shook his head and walked off in a random direction. Might as well pretend to get the bird's gloves and just run off when it wasn't looking.

* * *

A little while later after aimlessly pushing his way through the thick jungles of grass, Lann came upon a round wooden door stuck into the side of a mound of dirt. Curious, he opened the door and peeked inside. The interior was warm, well-lit with lanterns, and had wooden furniture strewn about the spacious dirt room.

It must be that gremlin's house, then. What great luck, to find it without even trying.

On a table next to a few cozy-looking armchairs was a pair of white gloves and a potion bottle labeled 'DRINK ME!' Lann pocketed the gloves and picked up the potion; this time, the liquid inside was the color of honey and, after a wary sniff, smelled like chocolate.

Lann downed the potion (_it tasted like Halloween candy, surprise surprise!_) and much to his horror, he began growing _bigger_. He managed to squeeze through the door just in time, too, or else he would've destroyed the gremlin's house with all of his growing.

Not that he'd really mind destroying the gremlin's house. It did, after all, chew on his arm.

Once he finished his potion-induced growing, Lann found that he had grown just enough so that he could see over most of the white-capped mushrooms in his way. As he began the arduous task of batting aside the much-shorter-in-length grass as he walked, Lann spotted a cloud of blue-gray smoke in the distance.

Interesting. What could possibly be happening, there?

As he got closer, Lann could smell a sickly-sweet stench that looked like it was coming from atop one of the larger mushrooms. Pulling himself on top of a mushroom that was just as tall as him, Lann scrambled to the center just as the mushroom head bowed under his weight.

Once the mushroom was stable, Lann brushed off some bits of dirt and grass from his armor and looked at the source of the smoke.

His eyes met those of Kai's, and Lann nearly fell over backwards when he saw that the man was sitting in the center of the mushroom cap dressed in a caterpillar suit_ (of all things!_) with his hands folded in his lap as he silently smoked a long hookah, and stared _through_ Lann as if he wasn't even there.

* * *

Caterpillar-Kai and Lann stared at each other for quite a while, but just as Lann was going to turn around and leave, Kai took the hookah from his mouth and asked, "Who are YOU?"

Lann blinked owlishly (_he could practically feel the emphasis that had been placed on 'you')_. What was going on here? The ache in his head made itself known once again, and Lann grimaced as he pressed a thumb against his temple. "I... I don't quite... don't you know me?"

"What do you mean by that?" The blank stare was unnerving.

"I... I'm Lann. And you're Kai. We're friends, aren't we?" No visible recognition. Lann tried a different approach. "What about Fiona? She's our friend. And Evie, the one who opens her mouth and doesn't stop talking? Karok, the guy who likes to smash everything? Oh for Morrighan's sake, surely you know Vella?"

Nope. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

Kai smoked the hookah some more. "I don't see."

Lann scratched the back of his head, frustrated. He certainly wasn't getting any answers out of him, then. "Well then, if you're not Kai, then who are YOU?"

The man continued to smoke as if he didn't hear the question. Lann threw his arms up and turned away.

He took no more than three steps when Kai called out, "I've something important for you, if you want it."

Lann turned around. Getting answers sound oh so very promising...

"Be patient." A ring of smoke within a ring of smoke within yet another ring of smoke flew past his head. Somewhere to his left, the endless plains of grass rustled from a passing breeze.

Lann deflated and replied dryly, "Anything more?"

Kai paused for a brief moment. "No."

Lann stared off into the distance, his hands clasped behind his back. Be patient, the caterpillar-man says. Might as well wait, seeing as he had nothing else to do. Besides finding a way out of this weird fantasy dream-land that he found himself in, of course. He stayed like that for an indeterminable amount of time as Kai puffed away on the hookah for a long while.

"Do you remember HOW you came here?" Lann turned, attention caught by Kai's sudden question.

"No, I don't... I suppose I fell. I fell down a hole that felt like it went on forever, and I lost my helmet along the way. I really liked that helmet."

A ring of smoke floated, weightless, into the cloudless blue sky. "A shame, really."

"Really, really." Lann mused.

"..."

"..."

"One side will make you grow taller, and the other, shorter." Lann blinked. Has the smoke finally gone to his head, or did that just sound like nonsense that was actually nonsense and not just a cleverly veiled riddle?

"One side of what?"

"Of the mushroom."

"..."

"..."

Lann shook his head and slid off the mushroom. Once on the ground, he broke apart a bit of both sides of the mushroom.

After walking a bit of a distance away from the eerily empty eyes of the caterpillar-Kai, he chanced a bite of the mushroom bit in his left hand (_it was disgustingly chewy and tasted exactly like what mushrooms tasted like_), and he began to grow taller. Once he surpassed his original height by quite some feet, however, he thought to take a bite from the other one. He then shrunk, losing a great deal of height.

Lann carefully alternated bites until he had ended up taller than the grass by a head. It was quite feat, seeing as his surroundings seemed to grow or shrink in accordance to his constant shifts of height. Strange.

Setting off in another direction, Lann walked. The grass no longer bothered him much, seeing as the tips of the grass now just barely reached his shoulder rather than towering over him.

And so, Lann walked.

And walked.

And kept walking, on and so on and on and so on, the endless valley of grass parting for him like a boat slicing through the waves of the sea. Despite how long he felt he walked, the sky stayed bright and blue; dusk seemed ever-so-far away...

Then, in the distance, he spotted what looked like Tieve's Inn and sped up into a practical jog. Mayhap he could get some answers, or at the very least a place to rest for a while before continuing on his way.

* * *

Lann ducked as a porcelain plate sailed over his head and smashed into the wall behind him. A clay teapot followed immediately afterwards. Taking the brief pause in flying dishware, Lann walked into the kitchen of what had looked like Tieve's Inn. A baby wailed from where it was nestled in a woman's arms, the woman herself balanced precariously on a three legged stool as a cook leaned over a pot that smelled too much like pepper and too little of actual stew.

"I don't suppose you care to tell me why that cat is grinning from ear to ear like a madman?" The brown-and-white-striped cat by the window only twisted its head and flicked its ears curiously, its devilish grin turning into something that looked more like a veiled sneer.

"It's a Cheshire Cat." Fiona, inexplicably wearing an unflattering dress the color of nightshade (_does Fiona even own dresses?_), held the wailing baby at arm's length. The wails grew to a ringing howl before subsiding into muffled whimpers and incomprehensible babble. The cycle then started all over again, and Lann was briefly reminded of a vampire's death shrieks. The child sounded like one, and certainly had the lungs.

"I've never heard of a Chesire Cat. Mysterious and shady and shire ones, yes, but Cheshire?" Lann barely avoided being hit in the face with a cast iron pot that the 'cook,' Ferghus, threw in his direction. Something was really wrong with this picture; probably it was the pepper making everything look crazy beyond belief.

"You tend to not know much." Fiona replied, her face placid and unchanging as ever, "That is a fact."

Lann would've flushed crimson at that comment, but somehow he kept his head – which was a good thing, seeing as Fiona then more or less flung the baby at him. Startled, Lann very nearly didn't catch the baby, who howled even louder in his clumsy hold.

"Well, I'm off to see the Queen to see if she would allow me to off it's head. Surely she has time for a Duchess." Fiona walked out of the room and just narrowly missed being hit by a frying pan. Lann sprinted after her, but once outside she was nowhere to be seen. A forest stretching as far as visibly possible was the only sight that greeted him and the screaming child in his arms.

"Well, then what am I to do with– wait, what?" Lann looked at the child, but it wasn't a child anymore but rather a toad. A poisonous toad, at that, sickly green all over and with black spots everywhere. And slimy.

Lann promptly dropped the child-turned-toad screamed (_and then croaked ghastly_) as it spit a glob of stinging acid at his chest, melting a bit of the chest plate off. The toad hopped away in the direction of the woods, and Lann pinched the bridge of his nose as the pounding in his head became unbearable for a split second before receding into a manageable ache yet again.

Wistfully, he thought it would be nice to have a health potion on hand, or perhaps even an armor repair kit, but no matter how hard he searched his backpack, nothing he ever needed turned up. It was a strange dilemma, but he was currently in an even stranger place, so he wasn't that surprised anymore.

A little ways into the wood, he was exploring for a lack of a better task to occupy himself with, Lann found the Chesire Cat lounging on a tree branch above his head. The Cat grinned, baring its many sharp teeth that were perfectly aligned with each other, when it saw Lann.

Lann had a good conscience to back up a step and put a hand on the hilt of a sword. Just in case the crazy Cat wanted to sink its admittedly large claws into him. Or perhaps chew his head off. Or both.

"Cat, do you know which way to go?" Might as well ask. He didn't really expect the Cat to respond, though.

The Cat's grin grew wider still and when it opened its mouth, Lann blinked in surprise as Gallagher's sneering voice came from the creature. "Do you have any FISH for me, ROOKIE?"

Lann checked his bag; sure enough, he found a well-sized Ignacht carp just sitting in there. He threw it at the Gallagher-Cat, who snapped it up in a single bite. The Cat licked its lips. Lann wrinkled his nose.

"Well, do you know the way out at least? Or, are you not going to tell me until I bring you a fortune's worth of useless trinkets and shiny baubles?" The Cat grinned mockingly and twisted its head a good 180 degrees.

The Cat's striped tail dangling faded from sight before reappearing a second later in a different position – pointing west. "In that direction, there's a Hatter." The tail twitched again and now pointed east. "In that direction lives a March Hare."

Lann scratched the back of his neck, trying to remember the idiosyncrasies of an opportunistic and crude motor mouth. "Anything I should know before I go, then?"

The Cat rested its head on it's folded paws. "They're both mad, you're mad, I'm mad, we're all mad. Bring me 1,000 more of those FISHES, and I'll show you the way out right now, ROOKIE." The Cat let out a bloodcurdling cackle before vanishing into thin air, it's derisive grin fading away last.

Lann sighed.

The Cat reappeared suddenly on the same branch. "Have you visited the Queen of Hearts yet?"

Lann's eyebrows furrowed. "No. Should I?"

The Cat flicked an ear and bared its teeth yet again. "I'll see you there. She won't mind some company, especially if it's mine..." The Cat disappeared again, the voice trailing off in an echo.

Lann couldn't help the shudder that ran down his spine as he began walking in the direction of what he presumed was east.

* * *

When Lann came upon the large house of the March Hare, he didn't expect to stumble into a tea party taking place in the front yard.

The March Hare, or rather a scantily-clad Vella wearing a rabbit-eared headband, and the Hatter, an also scantily clad Evie wearing a top hat adorned with a card that read _10/6_, were having tea, together.

Karok, in gray overalls and a mouse-eared headband, was snoring away between the two women who were using his head as a cushion for their elbows and arguing over his head in loud voices. It looked vaguely uncomfortable. The table that the 'tea party' was taking place on was very long and heaping with teapots, small cakes, and other tea-time delicacies.

However, as Lann shuffled closer, drawn in by the sight of the delicious-looking pastries, he nearly had a stroke when his two friends cried out just before he could touch a chocolate teacake, "NO ROOM! NO ROOM FOR YOU! GET OUT!"

"B-but there's so many–"

"No room!" This came from Vella.

"Go away, can't you see you're being rude?" Evie whined and crossed her arms across her chest.

Lann stared at them with sad eyes for a long while before unceremoniously plopping down in the chair next to Evie. "Are you sure there's no room for _me_?"

Vella flicked her hair back and sniffed. Karok let out a loud snore as Vella's elbow jabbed into the back of his head. "How very civil of you. Tea, then?"

Lann shrugged. "Sure. Thanks." A cup of tea slid in front of him and he took a careful sip. It tasted a lot like Brynn's tea, soothing and mellow and warm.

Evie picked up a teapot using her magic and, with a wave of her fingers, tossed it somewhere to the side where it shattered into pieces. "Perhaps you could help us answer this, Mr. Rude: why is a raven like a writing desk?"

Lann thought about it, mulling over the riddle in his head. He took another sip of his tea.

And thought about it.

And thought about it some more.

"Nope, sorry, can't help you." He deadpanned. Time to turn the tables on the freaky ensemble, perchance?

Vella sighed. "I don't know how you do it, staying sane. Being mad is all the better, isn't it?"

Evie tossed another teapot. "Madness... is freeing. Might as well say that the raven is a desk and the desk is a raven. At any rate, both of them can fly if you throw them out the window."

"Might as well say that getting scratched by either the raven or the desk leaves a scratch that lasts for days on end..." Karok sleep-grumbled. Vella jabbed her elbow into his neck and got a rumbling snore in response.

Lann held out his teacup. "I haven't the slightest idea. More tea?"

Evie poured some into his cup, and then poured some of the steaming liquid on Karok's outstretched hand. The hand jerked, but the oversized mouse-man continued sleeping. "Poor Dormouse, always napping and never listening to what I say. Ever since it's been always six o'clock, I believe. Tea-time."

Lann raised an eyebrow at Evie's garbled speech. Her top hat sloughed off its green color and was replaced with a dark blue instead. "What do you mean, six o' clock? It's still light out, see?"

He pointed at the sky, which was still cheery blue and without clouds. Vella huffed, suddenly irritated. "Mad, mad, mad, madness all the contrary. Which one of these is not like the other? I reckon he should fly far, far away. Like a chicken."

Lann put down his teacup with a clink on the saucer. "Hey now, I don't think–"

"You don't." Evie interrupted him mid-sentence, eying him with disdain. Her hat changed colors again, this time a near the shade of blood.

Somewhere behind him, an old grandfather clock chimed six slow, mournful bellows; it was six o' clock. A flock of ravens emerged from the woods and perched on many of the overturned and upside-down teapots and teakettles; the birds cawed noisily, sombre and grating and all too sharp for the ears.

Lann shoved himself onto his feet. Crazies, all of them, and perhaps moreso. What was he doing here? "All right, all right... I'll leave."

He stalked off, irked, leaving the chittering, twittering, and snoring group behind as he ventured farther into the woods. It didn't make sense; why did Vella and Evie suddenly turn hostile? As he mulled over the sudden change in behavior, he noticed a door carved into a tree a few steps to his left.

Curious and curiouser.

Lann opened the door and went through, only to find himself standing in the most beautiful garden he'd ever seen, practically bursting with decadent flower-beds and exquisitely carved stone fountains spouting thin streams of water into large basins.

* * *

Feeling adventurous, Lann poked and peered around the tall rose bushes (_violet and blue and orange ones, but not a single red rose?_). The blare of a horn called to him and he went about the garden to find where it was coming from.

Standing on the tip of his toes to see over a particularly large hedge, Lann sucked in a breath as he saw Rocheste Castle a short distance away. Squinting, he could just barely make out that a fancy procession was taking place, with long parade trumpets raised to the sky and armored knights poised stiffly along the staircase. A crowd of raucous people, waving and cheering and screaming, was clustered at the front of the steps. The giant wooden doors of the castle opened, and a group of people walked out.

Lann hurried along and pushed through the crowd, feeling out-of-sorts as he suddenly was shorter than everyone else by a good head or so. Something was going on, and damned if he was going to miss it!

It was just his luck that as he was being jostled this way and that by pointed elbows, he tripped on someone's cape in his haste and squawked in surprise as he fell flat on his face. Pushing himself back on his knees, Lann suddenly noticed that the noise of the crowd had simply... disappeared.

Lann looked up, and found Riordan, Nel, and Gwynn staring at him with pinched expressions on their faces.

Well, that sight would have been normal were it not for the fact that Riordan was wearing a furry coat with red hearts printed on them over his armor and a bejeweled crown, whereas Nel sported an extremely tall crown in addition to the hearts on her plain linen dress. Gwynn, oddly enough, looked as fierce as one could be in heart-dotted armor.

What–

"Who is this?" Riordan looked down his nose at Lann as he asked. Gwynn and Nel stared blankly at him without so much as a word.

"Tch." The man scoffed before pointing an indignant finger at Lann, who was effectively doing an imitation of a fish out of water. "Well then, cadet. What is your name?"

"Lann." It seemed like nobody knew who he was, except maybe for the Gallagher-cat.

"And what is all of this?" Riordan flicked his hands at the quiet crowd.

Lann shrugged. "Not my business."

Riordan sniffed and sneered at him for a moment (_but then again that happened on a near daily basis so he was quite used to it), _turning his nose up like a prat. "Of with your head, then. I do like the sight of an execution before tea time."

"But what di–" Lann felt armored hands grabbing and twisting his arms around his back with a surprising strength. A pair of knights drew him halfway to his feet and began dragging him off to who-knows-where, but before he turned a corner he heard Nel say to Riordan,

"But he's just a child..."

"I don't have time waste on him. Come, or we might as well be late for tea."

* * *

Instead of being deposited in a dungeon like he had expected, the knights dumped Lann in what looked like a throne room decorated with velvety red hearts from ceiling to tiles. He was entirely alone, hands bound in front of him with thick rope, so he started pulling at the bindings to test the restraint.

After a while, he began sawing it against one of his swords; the knights hadn't appeared to even notice that he was carrying weapons as they were dragging him here. He was almost through when a scratchy meow made him look up.

Gallagher-the-Cat grinned from where it sat on the floor a few feet away. It licked at a paw. "Did you find any more FISH for me yet, ROOKIE?"

The rope around his hands fell to the floor and he massaged the irritated skin on his wrists.

Lann wondered if he could kick a sometimes-incorporeal cat out the stained glass windows. "I wasn't aware that the Queen was a man. Is that possible?" The Cat opened its maw, and Lann quickly added, "Never mind. It's probably the least odd thing I've seen so far."

The Cat flicked a tongue at its stubby nose. Somewhere far away, a clock chimed faintly. "It's about time for your execution." At Lann's glare, it added blandly, "You know, if I had some FISH I'd have hot girls crawling all over me at this moment."

Lann glared harder. "Well, too bad for you."

The cat faded away with another one of its impossibly huge grins, and the heavy doors behind Lann slammed open with an echoing thud. Turning around, he saw _Queen_ Riordan, _King _Nel, and Gwynn striding into the room and walking right past him.

Knight after knight poured through the doorway, but what really caught Lann's attention was Duchess-Fiona walking in with the Gallagher-the-Chesire-Cat curled around her neck like a scarf. Arm in arm, March-Hare Vella and Mad-Hatter Evie skipped into the room, laughing maniacally as Karok-the-Dormouse shuffled slowly behind. Smoking-Caterpillar-Kai sauntered in, still holding his hookah. The baby gremlin, that damned creature, tittered worriedly over its pocket watch hopping alongside his friends.

The noise was almost deafening in the throne room, packed with so many bodies and people and _oh __Morrighan was that Beokros that just squeezed through a window_?

"SILENCE!" Riordan's shout caused the room to turn silent immediately. Lann stood at attention.

"We will now begin the trial of this... cadet..." From his throne, Riordan pointed a finger at Lann. "For the theft of my pancakes!"

The crowd of jurors and witnesses broke into hysterical shouting and crying, and Lann couldn't help but smack his forehead with the palm of his hand. He regretted that a second later as the headache returned with a vengeance.

"But weren't those MY pancakes in the first place?" The grinning Cat cheekily faded into a perch atop his head, and Lann shook the annoying man-cat-_thing_ off.

"The man admits it! Guilty! Guilty!" Well, then. Vella wasted no time in spouting nonsense again. Why was she in the jury box in the first place?

"My gloves! He has my gloves! Oh my dear, dear gloves!" The gremlin squeaked, looking as enraged as ever. Lann fumbled in his pockets and, indeed, he still had the gloves. Balling them up, he threw them at the gremlin.

The gloves smacked the gremlin in the face, and it immediately quieted. Finally!

"Well, what are we waiting for? Off with his head!" Riordan slouched in his throne, bored beyond imagination as he contemplated his nails. Nel put her face in her hands while Gwynn drew her sword.

"This can't be good." Lann drew his own swords.

"Well, nice knowing you." Gallagher the Cat disappeared abruptly into thin air.

Somewhere near but out of sight, a grandfather clock let out six thunderous tolls that reverberated throughout the room.

From behind him, the Beokros that had squeezed through the window let loose a bone-rattling roar and Lann only had enough time to turn around before the giant maw descended upon him, leaving him weightless and cold within the encompassing darkness.

* * *

Lann jerked awake in the bed he was lying in, sweat-damp sheets tangled around his legs, his skin clammy and feverish all over. It was hard to breathe, and he could hardly see anything at all!

_**Off with his head!**_

He could feel something covering his face and he began clawing at the what felt like bandages until rough hands, someone else was there, grabbed his arms and forced them at his sides. A heavy weight rested on top of his legs, preventing him from kicking or squirming out the bed. Another set of hands started to peel the half-torn bandages, piece by piece and excruciatingly slowly.

Not a good move, seeing as the panic in the back of his mind surged with a vengeance in accordance to the painful pounding in his head. He began struggling even harder.

_**Off with his head! Off with his head! Off with hishead offwithhisheadoffwith– **_

Lann could hear a few muffled shouts, sounding very far away and faint, before a familiar wave of cool magic washed over him. He stopped fighting at once, energy sapped and body numb from healing spell. The painful ache in his head played a unmerciful tattoo against his skull as it hammered away without so much as a by-your-leave.

Once the bandages over his eyes peeled off, Lann blinked a few times at how _sore_ his face was. Even his _eyelids_ were sore, of all things.

Fuzzy blobs of colors eventually transformed into people. Evie hovered worriedly over his head and spoke softly (_it was strange, seeing as he thought Evie only ever two volumes: loud and eardrum-bursting shouting_),

"Lann? Lann? Can you hear me? You're in Colhen, in the Inn." Bits and pieces slowly filtered in through the haze. He blinked several times. Indeed, it looked like he was in his room.

"What do you remember?" That came from Fiona, who had let go of his arms once he had gained most of his awareness. The weight on his legs lifted; Kai got up and left the room, not wanting to stay a moment longer now that he was sure Lann wasn't going to blindly lash out in panic.

"I..." Lann remembered his... dream... most vividly, but beyond that...

"You were hit in the face by a ricocheting cannonball. Sorry about that, by the way." Evie colored slightly and turned away; nobody really could have predicted the cannonball to bounce off her mana amber and head straight for Lann. The result had been very... bloody.

"You've been out for a a week. I've been healing you constantly. Just a few more days of bed rest and you'll be back to normal." Evie busied herself with another healing corona.

"You're lucky that you have a hard head." Fiona's lips twitched into a small smile as Evie grinned at her joke. Despite feeling lightheaded and somewhat dazed from the abrupt transition from a fantasy land to his reality, Lann couldn't help but return the smile for a moment, even though his split lip stung in response.

Another healing corona made the most of the soreness go away and the overwhelming weight of drowsiness pulled at his eyelids. Lann thought he faintly heard a grandfather clock downstairs in the dining room chime six times; he did not know whether it was morning or nighttime.

Eyes drooping and just about to fall asleep, he managed to mumble out, "Is'sit time for tea?"


End file.
